This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

ISF makes me grumpy

I hate it. I’m glad it’s changing… but I can’t sit on my thumbs waiting for it to change.

*sigh*

Ok. Soul Fire is a long cast fire spell (4 seconds unless you spec into Emberstorm. Then you can bring it down to 2 second cast) that has no business in my shadowy dotty rotation. Regardless, 15% haste is too good to pass up. So… if I’m going to be a “good” warlock I need to add it to my rotation.

Soulburn + Soul Fire gives me instant soul fires. Instant is good, I can live with instant. So was born my Soul Fire macro:

/cast Soulburn
/cast Soul Fire

The problems
There are many problems. Soulburn has a 45 second cooldown and the Improved Soul Fire buff has a 15 second duration and cooldown. So I get one instant soul fire and then have to cast two slowass soul fires before I get another instant one.

ADD TO THAT, if I overlap the casts AT ALL the buff doesn’t refresh. So I have to wait for the haste buff to run out.. or wait to cast until the duration < cast time before I can refresh the dratted thing. ADD TO THAT!!! It doesn't stack with heroism so when a heroism goes off we either have to finagle to drop the buff before the heroism (yeah, like raiding environments are that predictable) or we just have to accept that we see only half the benefit the rest of the raid sees. SUCK. ADDING INSULT TO INJURY, I only get 3 instant casts of soul fire per fight UNLESS there are adds in the fight. If there are adds then I can use Drain Soul to regen up to 3 soul shards during the fight. But still. HATE HATE HATE.

9 comments to ISF makes me grumpy

Sorry Nibuca, This is all Destro love. Despite our apparent lack of wanting haste. Empowered Imp triggers for me at least once a fight.

Now, darn, if that haste buff in VP isn’t all love. Incinerates at 3 a second, followed by a soul fire…. oooooh! giddy. 15k dps and I wasn’t even doing a decent rotation.elkagorasa´s last post ..85 and Closing in on 525

Even as a Destruction Lock I find mixing to into my rotation cumbersome at best, even more so if you also have to shoot a Shadowbolt every so often to keep that debuff up because no one else in the group can.

Heyo,
Heroism will overwrite ISF, so you don’t need to worry about loosing out on the buff. In addition, you only need your next SF to land after the buff expires. You can (and should) begin to cast your next to get the 15% effect on the new cast.

You can cast Soul Fire without burning a shard, y’know. With the Emberstorm talent, you can even get it down to where it’s only a little longer than regular old Shadow Bolt. If you time it correctly, you can even cast Soul Fire while you still have the ISF buff and get it to land just after the ISF buff falls off.

It’s really fun when you get ISF up while being upwind in Altairus’s fight in VP (or Cookie’s encounter in Deadmines). 1s Shadow Bolts, yes please!

I’m affliction and I freaking love this talent. It adds a little spice to my Shadow Bolt Bolt Bolt DoT Bolt Bolt Bolt DoT Bolt Bolt DoT DoT Bolt Bolt Bolt Bolt Bolt spam. With a Power Aura, I manage it like it’s a DoT; it’s like Haunt since it applies a buff with front-end damage and has a travel time. (Unlike Haunt, you can’t overlap it, but then I treat it like pre-4.0-clipping-not-allowed Curse of Agony in that regard.)Poneria´s last post ..1 Year…ish…

I have only been casting the Soul Fire (burning shard) when it is off cooldown. I don’t worry about the extra haste. Of course I haven’t run any numbers but just figure that the extra SB and DOT upkeep will keep the DPS close.

I try to time it when I have to recast Haunt in the Boss fights, so I am either getting a SB first or casting haunt as soon as I burn it.

One thing I just noticed this last week. I used to be able to drain a little critter in a dungeon to fill my Soul Stokes. I was in a 5 man and of course we were in a wipe fest and ran out of Soulstones. I proceeded to drain a critter and nothing. Did I miss in a patch note somewhere that they took that option away from us?